Actiontec Electronics, Inc. said today that its 802MIP Mini PCI 802.11b/Modem Combo Card is available for immediate shipping to OEMs. The card provides an integrated solution for accessing WLANs and conventional dial-up services. It is designed to work in PCs, laptops and handhelds.
The MIni PCI 802.11b/Modem Card Combo effectively eliminates the need for users to give up a valuable PC card slot to remain connected to their corporate WLAN or the Net.
The Card Combo uses Intersil’s new PRISM 2.5 chip set. This chip set integrates the digital portion – the baseband processor (BBP) and the medium access controller (MAC) – putting the IEEE 802.11b WLAN standard into one integrated circuit (IC). The card uses the RC4 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) 40 IEEE standard, offering encryption at 64 or 128-bit levels.
On the WLAN side, the card uses 2.4 GHz Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) technology, adaptively adjusting its data rate from 11 Mbps to 5.5/2.0/1.0 Mbps as the signal strength warrants.
The modem is v.90 compliant and AC97 compliant. It incorporates both Data Fax and Wake Up on Ring functionality. The digital line interface is programmable and designed to accommodate global line requirements.
The laptop solution using the Mini PCI Combo has passed the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) wi-fi test to ensure systemwide interoperability with other 802.11b-certified products.
